For Everything, A Season
by zarabithia
Summary: Four seasons spent in Rainbow Valley, as seen through the eyes of Jem, Walter, and Una.


Title: For Everything, A Season

Characters: Jem, Walter, Una

Archive: If you're so inclined. Just let me know where it goes.

Summary: Four different seasons in Rainbow Valley.

_If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom._

Jem Blythe was not given to the poetic nature of Walter, and he could not describe spring in Rainbow Valley with the eloquence of his younger brother. His was a scientific eye, born for explaining the hows and the whys of the world around him, where Walter saw only what was. Whereas Jem sought explanations to gain sap from a tree, Walter sought to describe it in the details that would make it seem more vibrant and real with his words than nature itself had done in creating it.

It was not often that Jem envied Walter's way with the prose, no more than he envied Shirley's quietness, or Di's charm. None of the Blythe children were like the other, and as Mother had always said, their differences were what made them work together as a family. Like the stones, trees, brook, and grassy plain of the valley itself, Mother had said, her eyes twinkling with the kind of far away mirth that made it clear, on occasion, just where Walter had gotten his love of beauty.

But in spring time, envy for Walter's way with prose filled Jem's blood. It was a particularly sharp envy as he sat on a moss-covered stone in their Rainbow Valley and watched Faith Meredith converse with her sister and Mary Vance beneath the valleys large cherry tree. Mary was dressed in the finest threads Miss Cornelia and Marshall Elliot could afford, and brand new boots, light enough for the weather, but sturdy enough for the puddles caused by the sudden downpours spring brought to the island, shining as brightly as Mary Vance's own vanity at owning the new clothes and boots. Faith was not dressed as shabbily as she'd once been, before Rosemary West had gone to live at the manse, yet the repeating drizzle of spring rain and the pure desire to romp freely through the valley required a less extravagant dress than that of her companion. Thus, she and Una were both clothed in comparatively plain attire.

While admittedly, Jem was as concerned with fashion as the average man, as Miss Cornelia might have stated, he was also as concerned with a beautiful woman as the average man, and in his eyes, the plain cotton print that hung on Faith Meredith's frame was far more beautiful than the one on either of her companions. In Jem's eyes, the girl with golden-brown curls sitting beneath the cherry tree was every bit as lovely as the brilliant blooms of the tree itself, and had he been blessed with Walter's way with words or comparisons, he would have gladly and truthfully - at least for him - expressed the notion that none in all of Glen St. Mary nor the immediate surrounding area could be as beautiful as the vision of Faith beneath the wild cherry tree.

He was certain, as he watched her, that though autumn would carry him away to do his studies elsewhere, no place in the world would feel as right and perfect as he felt on that mossy stone, with Dog Monday's faithful head propped on his knee.

Watching her, Jem was, for the first time, truly envious of Walter's ability to pay homage to the beautiful in the world.

Envy was in the air on that particular spring night in Rainbow Valley. For while Una had no resentment in her heart towards her sister, no did she have any fancy for Jem Blythe, she did find her gaze wandering to the poet in question and wishing Walter could look at her the way his brother looked at Faith.

Walter sat beneath the Tree Lovers, closer to the spruce than the maple, engrossed in both the poems he loved and the poems he wrote, unaware of the heart that yearned for him.

_Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer's year - it brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul._

In the older, but never to be forgotten, days of their youth, Rainbow Valley had always been full. Though it sprawled openly, with at least four Blythe children and four Merediths, and the usual visit by Mary Vance, even the valley seemed hardly large enough to contain the enthusiasm they'd always had. Yet that hadn't kept them from trying. Rarely had a evening gone by in which most of both families had gathered to play and to converse, with the occasional argument, and most of all, to simply enjoy one another's company.

But on this particular summer night, there were but two of them gathered in the valley. Only Una and Walter were its occupants, with their older siblings gone off to engage in play too grown, too serious for Rainbow Valley, and Rilla too engaged with the likes of Irene Howard, who could never begin to love or appreciate Rainbow Valley with the thrill it deserved.

Rainbow Valley had once opened its arms to strangers, and Una and her family had been among them, but had long since closed its doors in an effort to keep its children safe and near. Though those efforts didn't work, the stubborn space had been spoiled enough with the past affection that had been bestowed that it still extended its welcome only to the chosen few, and only those who promised to love Rainbow Valley with the lack of fickleness first promised by the four Blythe children who had stumbled upon its grasses years ago.

Una sat with her feet tucked beneath her dress, leaning against the trunk of the cherry tree and listened to the words of her dark-haired companion.

"Do you know, Una, that I have never trusted summer?" Walter asked. "There's something not quite right about it, not quite as promising as the other seasons."

"Why not, Walter?" Una was surprised to hear that the Walter, who loved life and beauty so much, did not equally love the time of year when everything was as full of life and beauty as nature would allow.

"It seems deceitful somehow. That even as summer wraps you in the warmest embrace of her hottest days, the earth is preparing to unleash the bitterly cold winds of autumn upon you." Walter frowned, a rare sight on what Una considered to otherwise be the most pleasant face she knew.

"Father says God gives us spring and summer to ease the pain of winter," Una answered, plucking the stray ant from her dress, and smiling inwardly as she thought of the delight it would have brought Carl.

"Spring I can believe. But summer - no. Summer He gave as a warning of the harshness of what was to come," Walter responded, his face taking on the dreamy look it was known for, the one that made Una's cheeks tinge with same cherry red as the fruit that demanded her companion's attention. "Why, look, Una, even the cherry tree is more splendid and beautiful in spring than summer. In spring, she sways and sings, branches full of the white blossoms whose very brilliance can blind you if you glance at them from the right angle, even as far away as the attic at Ingleside. Yet in the summer, her branches droop, so weighted are they by the very bittersweet life-giving fruit she bears."

"I've never cared for the bloom or the fruit," Una confessed.

Walter rolled over lazily as befitted the season, and propped his head in his hand. "But I thought the cherry tree was your favorite?" he asked.

Una pushed down the little, girlish thrill that overtook her at the knowledge that Walter had taken time - time away from his dreams, time away from his poems, time away from that which he devoted to everyone else - to notice that much about her, and nodded. "It is." She preferred it far more than the Tree Lovers or White Lady. "But I've always liked it because of the bark. It's so different than any other tree bark I've touched. It's smoother." She sat up enough to run her hand over the bark. "Regardless of the season."

Walter regarded her before sitting up and running his hand over the bark as well. Their fingers did not touch, but Una could not imagine that the act would have been any more intimate if they actually had.

"I suppose you are right about the bark," Walter agreed after a moment. "Imagine, all the fondness and poems devoted to the cherry blossoms, when the steadfastness of its gentle bark has never received the due devotion it deserves."

Later, after Una had gone home, Walter went to work correcting that particular oversight. He spent an additional hour paying his own tribute to the bark, ignoring the heavy groaning of the wind rustling through the cherries, as he wrote his poem in the moonlight.

_Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all._

Walter did not understand the seasons in France, or indeed, if they had seasons. He was not certain that even if they traditionally did, that such jolliness as spring could come to a country torn apart and ruined by war.

But he did know that at home, it would be autumn, and though his body ached, and his heart sore from all that war has shown him thus far, tonight had been full of the kind of reflection that he has not truly allowed himself to indulge in since his arrival in the strange land that his mother and father had once told such beautiful tales about, in those long ago years in which they'd had the luxury and safety of vacationing here. Walter had seen pictures in books, and heard his own mother's lovely words, but it was hard for him to imagine France as ever being beautiful. To Walter, it would always hold the ugliness that it had unwillingly had thrust upon it by the ravages of war.

Yet tonight, Walter did not think of the ugliness that surrounded him. With his letters written, Walter allowed himself the right to think of his brothers and sisters, his parents, and his neighbors. He did not think of them as he knew he would find them now - there was no thinking of Jem in a uniform that matched Walter's own, no thoughts spared towards the Red Cross work done by his sisters, no wringing of his mother's worried hands, no thoughts of the grey that lined his father's curls.

Instead, he remembered them as they used to be, at their liveliest, and most beautiful. He thought of Mother in the parlor talking to Miss Cornelia, of Father sitting on the veranda studying a medical text while soaking up every word that dropped from Mother's lips, of Susan in the kitchen busying herself in all the Susan-like ways. Shirley was no doubt underfoot with Susan, while Rilla - there was no where at Ingleside or the Glen where Rilla did not belong, and Walter imagined her, both as the rolly-polly baby that he had been the first of the Blythe children to see, and as the young woman aching to be taken seriously as an adult, even as she delighted in her love for fun.

His heart ached a little that her path to womanhood should be so cut short of the fun she craved, when the rest of them had wallowed in pleasure, dreaming of a life full of joy and lacking in any duty other than being happy.

Most of their wallowing had taken place in Rainbow Valley, and tonight, Walter could not only see that lovable staple of his childhood, but also felt it in a way that he could not feel about the maple grove, Green Gables, or even his boyhood home. In many ways, Rainbow Valley felt more real than the war torn France around him. He smelled the trout caught by Jem and cooked by Mary Vance, with its special glaze of sunshine and childish jubilance. He tasted the way the raw picked nuts gathered by Jem and the berries plucked by Nan mingled in his throat with the water from the tiny brook running through the valley. He felt Di's breath next to his ear and one of Carl's frogs hopping over his toes as he confessed one of many secrets the two of them had shared, and also felt the childish pout of Rilla who did not understand why Di was the keeper of his secrets. He heard the Tree Lovers blowing with a particularly strong autumn wind, harboring the onslaught of winter to come, mingling with Jem's whistles, his own attempts at yodels, and the laugher of Nan, Di, and Faith. He saw Una, and her steadfast eyes, gazing at him earnestly from beside the trunk of the tree she'd loved so much.

Tomorrow, they will go over the top. Walter was not afraid, and he would not spend the night in mourning of the life he is certain the Piper shall call for tomorrow. Yet, he did ache for the autumns he will never get to spend in Rainbow Valley, the nieces, nephews...and perhaps, sons and daughters, that he will never to watch frolic among the fairy paths of his childhood playground.

He hoped, when the call was answered, that he and the sister called home before him - the one he had never been allowed to know - would find heaven as pleasant as the little Rainbow Valley of home.

_Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories._

In her later years, Una grew quite unbothered by winter. The thrill had long since gone out of spring, with its hopeful blossoms, and summer, with its deceitful warmth. Autumn still offered occasionally unbearably cheerful days, in which the birds sang love songs to their mates, with no consideration for those who would never know the comfort of a lover's embrace.

But winter...winter did not scorn Una's loss as the other seasons were wont to do. In winter, all the world - or at least, the world Una was concerned with - was covered in a blanket of cold and barrenness. Una did not engage in the type of pettiness that begrudged others of companionship, even while she knew she would never feel the same for another, and her newfound appreciation for the season was not a case of enjoying the sharing of her own misery. Rather, it was a simple case of enjoying some sign that she was not alone in her heartache, no matter how fleeting the reminder might have been.

On this particular winter day, Una was alone, as she sat on her favorite spot beneath the bare cherry branches in Rainbow Valley. When the winter was over, spring would allow a new generation of Blythes, Merediths, and a Ford to descend upon the favored childhood play spot of their parents.

Not all of them had stayed in Glen St. Mary, of course. Shirley, much to the anguish of Susan Baker, had taken up residence in the States following the war and he, his wife, and son visited ill-frequently. Bruce had gone west to study theology, following in his father's footsteps far away from the manse. Diana Blythe had moved to mother's childhood home of Avonlea where she had taught until meeting the man who had swept her off her feet.

How strange it must have been, Una thought, to have to go so far from home to meet the one who owned your heart. Though, admittedly, her own heart might have been spared from breaking had fate seen fit to give her the same destiny.

Others, such as Rilla and Kenneth Ford, had wandered away, but come back once it had been time to raise their children. Rilla had confessed to Una that though Toronto was a lovely city, she could not bear to think of raising little Walter anywhere where he did not have access to a Rainbow Valley.

Had Una any children of her own, particularly any as dear as the lisping little boy that bore his uncle's name, she would have agreed with the sentiment.

It was understandable, then, that when spring came, and brought with it birthdays enough that the parents could feel safe about sending their children further away than their own lawns, the little valley would be the first choice for play.

When that time came, Una knew, her right to visit Rainbow Valley would be over.

She wasn't bitter about this fact. She had claimed the privilege of Rainbow Valley and its harbor of memories far longer than any of her playmates or siblings, and when spring came she would, without hesitation, step aside and make room for the children.

But it was not quite spring yet, and until the snow stopped falling and the wind stopped biting passerby's cheeks as it howled, Rainbow Valley was still hers. Thus, Una enjoyed the twilight as she leaned against the trunk of her cherry tree, and allowed herself to be warmed by memories of seasons past.


End file.
